Glioblastoma is glioma with the highest malignant degree in astrocytomas. This tumor locates below the cortex and grows throughout supratentorial cerebral hemisphere in most cases. This tumor grows in an infiltrative manner, often invades several cerebral lobes, and further invades the deep structure and can also affect the contralateral cerebral hemisphere via the callus. This tumor mostly grows in the frontal lobe, followed by the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe, and the tumor can also occur in the occipital lobe/the thalamus, the basal ganglia and the like in a few cases.
The glioblastoma has a high growth rate and short disease course, and for 70-80% of patients, the disease course is 3-6 months, and only 10% of the patients have a disease course of more than 1 year. In the individual cases, the stroke-like episodes may occur due to tumor bleeding. Due to rapid growth of the tumor, the hydrocephalus occurs frequently, and the symptom of increased intracranial pressure is obvious, and almost all the patients suffer from headache, vomiting, papilledema/headache, mental changes, limb weakness, unconsciousness, and speech disorders. The glioblastoma damages brain tissues in an infiltrative manner and causes a series of focal lesion symptoms, and the patients have aphasia, hemiplegia, hemianesthesia, hemianopsia and the like to different extents. Hemiplegia, brain neural damages, hemianesthesia, and hemianopsia can be found by neurological examination. About 33% of the patients have seizures and about 20% of the patients have dementia, hypophrenia, and other mental symptoms.
The glioblastoma can be divided into secondary glioblastoma developed from low-grade astrocytomas and primary glioblastoma which does not show early stage low-grade lesions. But the secondary glioblastoma and the primary glioblastoma are very difficult to be distinguished in histology. At present, although the mutation of isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) is only found in the secondary glioblastoma, the mutation of IDH does not occur in part of the secondary glioblastomas.
Thus, the detection of the secondary glioblastoma cannot solely rely on the detection of the mutation of IDH, and a new method for detecting secondary glioblastoma needs to be developed to improve the detection of the secondary glioblastoma.